Refuelling the future
All the lobbying power and political
clout in the world won’t matter if
your main product is becoming stigmatised, unfashionable, and obsolete. Fleet Europe investigates how,
before a new green world, fuel suppliers are preparing their future.

S

ay fuel suppliers and perhaps you think Exxon, Shell
and BP. But will they be
there tomorrow? There’s an
e-revolution afoot and fossil fuels are
out. So what are the big boys doing to
manage a future where new fuels are
the aim of the game? The construction
of new fuels and their infrastructures
are being fast-tracked across much of
the world as emission caps, new fuel
targets and green-thinking take over.
So while petrol gets a bad press, it’s
all about new fuels – and the oil industry’s big boys are watching, waiting
and building.
Hydrogen
Although expensive and problematic
to transport, hydrogen fuel cells are
a hot topic.
Just last month the European Parliament’s Transport Committee voted
on measures to build-up the alternative fuel station infrastructure across
Europe to break the oil dependency
of transport; and to solve the “chicken and egg” problem of hydrogen fuel
cells.
The UK aims to have 60 hydrogen
fueling stations by 2015 as part of a
Europe-wide initiative. Navigant estimates the FCV market will grow from
$194 million in 2015 to $73.8 billion in
2030 and there are very real plans to
build a hydrogen highways that spans
much of the continent.
You may be thinking gas giants like
Centrica, Eon, Total, BOC or Iber-

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Petrol is still the order of today but tomorrow, when other alternative fuels
are king, the oil companies want to be ready.
drola should be best-placed to lead
the hydrogen charge, but it’s actually
a race that’s wide open – and you just
wouldn’t write off the oil barrens yet.
Hydrogen’s supply chain and economic infrastructure needs investment
and bulletproofing – and oil companies are working on it.
Natural gas is the parent product
to hydrogen, but wind-power, hydro-power, nuclear, and solar power
all – in different ways and at different
points – feed the hydrogen-fuel supply
chain, so there’s been heavy investment from oil companies. BP tells us
they’ve spent $1 billion in alternative
energy in 2012 alone, bringing total investment in greener options to
$7.6 billion since 2005.
Oil and gas giant alike are jostling for
position for the moment (if and when)
hydrogen takes over on our roads.
Both Exxon and BP have swallowed up

natural gas companies and are flexing their muscles in shale drilling and
fructuring.
It has, only recently, become technically feasible and worthwhile to transport liquified natural gas over long
distances by ship. So there’s global
market potential in gas that there
wasn’t before and, as it stands, there
is still no global market or global
price for gas. If it becomes the primary source for fuel on the world’s roads,
there will be a race to set prices and
manage the economics of hydrogen –
and everyone wants a casting vote in
that process.
Efficiency, Bio-fuels, and the future
In the short term, smarter fuel solutions involve working with the primary power sources. BP Fuel Sales
Manager (Aral) Stefan Mahler told
Fleet Europe that prolonging fuel’s life